el toro
/
i swear i hated you, thought you were gross, now i'm a fool
Toro pays little attention to the scruffy boy wandering around the meadow, dismissing him almost as soon as he sees him. But then he gets closer, and closer, and...he stops. “Are you my” - a reluctant pause - “date?” Toro looks down (down, down) at him and blinks. He - he had expected...a girl. Of course. It didn’t matter if - if he thought anything about certain boys, really, because his date was supposed to be a girl. He should be dating girls. But he thinks back to his invitation and, with great disappointment, realizes that this...boy...matches the (relatively vague) rhyme. So Toro clears his throat and says, finally, “I believe so. This is...surprising.” He - doesn’t want to be rude. Maybe this guy was hoping for someone (handsome, tall, accomplished) like Toro. It wouldn’t do to just stomp on his feelings. Even if he looked...so...plain.
The bay passes him the crudely wrapped gift, resigned to its fate. Toro thinks about his own present and, silently, agrees that resigned is the word for the fate of that investment. He unwraps the gift, carefully, trying to keep his expression mostly blank and a little expectant (a kindness, he thinks). When was the last time anyone had given him a gift? (A long, long time ago, and it was Anzhelo. He couldn’t forget. He didn’t even want to, for once.) He pulls the paper away and stares at it for a moment, his eyes finding their way through every sloppily-soddered limb and rusted screw. Toro looks up, and smiles, genuinely. “It’s lovely. Did you make it?” (Obviously.) He pauses and then holds out his own gift, a tiny wooden box lacquered red. Toro had been beyond relieved to know that it came in its own box; his idea of gift-wrapping was akin to Dune’s. “I - this is for you, then. It...may not be to your tastes.” Maybe it was. He could sell it, anyway.
His - date - (it pains him to even think it, how awkward!) makes a comment about the snow. Toro chuckles a little. “I don’t mind the snow. But I stay in Solterra for a reason.” That reason had never been clear, from the beginning, and even as he finds himself at the helm of its soldiers - a position he sought for years before his father’s death - Toro cannot say why, exactly, he stays in a land determined to burn his skin off before midday and twice as determined to wring the water from his very bones. Even if he does know, somewhere in his heart, he dare not go looking for it.
Dune. The name had an air of finality to it, perhaps because it sounded like doom or because it stood for something impermanent yet bound to return to the same shape. Dunes would not always be dunes, but they would become dunes again.
This is getting stupid.
Toro smiles tightly and says, “Toro. Nice to meet you, Dune. Whatever the circumstances.” It could be worse. Even if he just handed a very boring stranger (boy) a very expensive necklace.
